“Good-bye,” Kellen said. “Fare you well.”
The selkie released his hand, and slipped beneath the surface of the water, invisible once more.
Shaking his head in amusement, Kellen led Coalwind and Prettyfoot back into the woods to fresh grazing. In a few hours he’d come back and lead them in closer to the cabin, tying them up securely for the night so they couldn’t wander. He had no desire to spend several hours come tomorrow’s dawn trying to find them!
“No fear of that,” Shalkan said, stepping daintily out of the woods, hidden until that moment, though how something the size of a pony and whiter than new velum could hide that easily, Kellen could never figure out. “I’ll keep an eye on them.”
“Will you?” Kellen regarded the unicorn with relief. “Thanks. That’ll be a great help.”
Shalkan dipped his horn, acknowledging the thanks. “I was waiting for you to ask.”
Kellen shrugged. “I didn’t want you to miss the party if you were in the mood for it. It just seems like I’m asking you for so much already.”
“You mean, being your noble conveyance to the Elven lands?” The unicorn snorted. “I’d be going there anyway. If it’s a choice between that and facing another dozen packs, I’d say it’s no choice at all, my friend. And you’ll find the Elves … interesting. Humans do.”
Kellen would have dearly loved to ask Shalkan more about the Elves, but this was no time to get into one of the unicorn’s elliptical conversations. Idalia already blamed him for springing the party on her. If he disappeared for most of the day, she’d probably arrange to have him drowned in a keg of cider. So he abandoned the interesting topic in favor of telling Shalkan what the selkie had told him.
“They’d take the fish from the lakes as well, if they could, as the dryads would take the fruit from their trees,” Shalkan said. “The City will find no welcome in the Western Hills when it comes, nor do I think the farmers who remain will have an easy life. They will not thank the City for that.”
“No,” Kellen agreed glumly. He hobbled the mare and the mule once again, and turned them out to graze, retrieving the bucket from where he’d left it.
“Well, see you later. I’ll save you some honey-cakes.”
“See that you do,” Shalkan said with mock severity, switching his tufted tail. “And if anyone’s brought any of those maple-syrup candies, and I find out you didn’t save me at least two …”
“At least!” Kellen promised, and hurried back toward the cabin.
Shalkan, of course, stayed out of sight with the mule and the horse—he wasn’t at all comfortable, Kellen had noticed, with so many people about, most of them (probably) not virginal—and Kellen was just a little bit curious about how Shalkan and Idalia were going to handle traveling in close proximity together, though both of them agreed it was necessary. Finally he decided there was no sense worrying about it. He’d be finding out. And soon, too.
KELLEN spent the rest of the day helping with the preparations for the party. His own and Idalia’s arrangements for leaving were all but finished, and there was really nothing left for him to do there. Besides, working kept him from thinking. And there was plenty of work to do: helping to put up the poles that would hold the various awnings and canopies, climbing trees to hang lanterns (knowing he—or someone—would have to climb them again later to light the lanterns), fetching and carrying kegs and bundles, all the while sniffing glorious smells and stealing tastes of delicacies that would be unveiled later.
And hearing people talk about the days ahead, which sometimes meant hearing more than he wanted to.
“I’M not going without you, you damned foolish old besom,” Cormo rumbled, in what was—for him—a quiet undertone. It was entirely audible ten feet away, where Kellen was digging a new firepit.
“And I’m not going,” Haneida said peaceably. “These old bones are much too old to be bundled up like a goosedown mattress and hie themselves up into the mountains like someone’s luggage. And what would I tell my bees? I’m staying.”
Cormo stamped his hoof. “Then I’m staying too, you senile old halfwit.”
Haneida tsked. “Such love-talk! Cormo, your mother fell in love with a donkey. You can’t stay, and I won’t go,” Haneida said reasonably.
“I promised,” Cormo growled in dangerous tones. “And I’m not leaving you with nobody to take care of you.”
Suddenly Kellen realized that there was more at stake here than one stubborn old woman, and an equally stubborn Centaur. Cormo had promised the Wild Magic to haul Haneida’s cart to market for a year and a day. Very quietly, Kellen set down his shovel and went looking for Idalia.
He found her inside the cabin, with several of the village women. All the furniture had already been taken outside, even the bed, and the doors had been removed to serve as tables. Their equipment was in the bedroom; they’d sleep on their bedrolls on the floor tonight and get an early start in the morning. The main room was filled with more provisions; stacked hampers and sturdy boxes, making it look less like a cabin and more like a small supply pantry.
“Idalia, can I talk to you? Alone?”
Idalia excused herself and came outside. It took a few minutes before they could find a place that was reasonably private.
“It’s Cormo,” Kellen said before Idalia could say anything. “I heard him arguing with Haneida. He’s saying he won’t leave with the last of the other Centaurs when they go. I know Merana’s still here, but that’s because Master Eliron’s going and she’s going with him. But Haneida says she won’t leave, and Cormo says he won’t leave without her.” His brow furrowed with worry; it didn’t seem right that Cormo should do all the improving he had only to be punished for trying to keep his word and his pledge!
“I think he’s worried about what will happen if he doesn’t pay his part of the Price for the Healing you did for him, and that’s why he won’t leave, so if you could just talk to him …”
Kellen’s voice trailed off. Idalia was smiling and shaking her head.
“Brother mine, I love you dearly, but sometimes you can be as sweet and dim as a—as a toffee-covered lantern! I’ve already spoken to Cormo, days ago—the Gods would never punish someone by forcing them to keep to the terms of a bargain when a situation had changed so drastically. Cormo knows nothing will happen to him if he doesn’t stay and pay the price he agreed to—and just between you and me, what he’s done for Haneida in the last fortnight has been payment in full! No. The reason he doesn’t want to leave her is because he’s afraid of what will happen to her when she’s left all alone; she still refuses to move down into the village, even though half the houses are standing empty now. He isn’t wrong to worry, but she’s right, too: she’s far too frail to survive the journey into the High Hills with winter coming on.”
That put a different complexion on things, but it didn’t make things any better, at least from where Kellen was standing.
And Haneida wasn’t the only one … There were so many old folks in the village, too old to move. How would the Militia and the Mages treat them?
For that matter, what would happen to Cormo? “Oh, Idalia, what are they going to do? What are they all going to do?” Kellen asked helplessly.
“Their best,” Idalia said grimly. “That’s all anyone can do. You, me, Cormo, Haneida … all any of us can do is our best. Now come. You’re the one who told me that a party was the best medicine for future ills. Smile. It’s the least we can do for them. And we owe them that.”
BY late afternoon the farewell party had begun in good earnest, when the musicians began tuning up and the much-awaited cold dishes were finally set out on the long tables. The roasted meats would not be ready for several hours yet, but that hardly mattered. The drinking and feasting would go on all night, from what Kellen could tell.
There would be some speeches of well-wishing, but as Master Badelz had told Kellen when he’d arrived an hour before, it was only a fool who attempted to catch the attention of a hungry c
rowd. People who had been working or traveling all day were looking forward to food and gossip and lively tunes, not speeches, the Mayor of Merryvale said. A few hours of that, and they’d be ready to listen to the likes of him!
Kellen hadn’t seen so many people in one place since he’d left Armethalieh. They filled the entire clearing and spread into the woods beyond—not only humans and the few Centaurs who hadn’t yet left, but the Otherfolk that anyone could see: Fauns and brownies, pixies and gnomes. Even those folk invisible to those without a touch of the Sight were here: dryads clustered among the trees, sylphs in the air above them, flower-sprites and forest-fae flitting among the leaves.
Now the musicians, having fortified themselves with a quick visit to the kegs, were tuning up and preparing to play.
One of them was a Centaur, one of the few who had remained. He was the oldest Centaur Kellen had ever seen. His hair and beard and tail were quite white, and his chestnut coat had faded with time to a very pale pink. He moved with the slow certainty of age, and a young blacksmith had to lend his shoulder to help the ancient one gain the musicians’ stage, for Centaurs, like the horses they partially resembled, were clumsy around steps of any kind. The crowd watched in hushed expectancy; even Idalia, standing beside Kellen in the crowd, seemed excited.
“Oh, I never thought I’d get to hear Verlin play one last time! You’re in for a treat, Kellen,” she said happily.
Once settled on the stage, Verlin carefully removed a carry-bag from his shoulder, and extracted the strangest item Kellen had seen. It must be a musical instrument, but what kind? It had strings, but it was too small to be a lute, and the wrong shape besides. Besides, he had a bow in his other hand, and the only instrument Kellen knew that used a bow was a psaltery.
Then Verlin tucked the flat paddle-shaped not-a-lute beneath his chin and began to play.
A wail of unfamiliar sound assaulted Kellen’s ears. He’d never heard anything like it in his life, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to now; the sound made him think of riding Shalkan through the midnight forest during his escape and drinking a pint tankard of mead both at once. It took his breath away and made him want to yell and run in circles—at the same time, if possible. The drum and pipe sharing the stage with Verlin joined in, and so did the spectators, stamping and clapping to the rhythm of the music. Some stepped back to watch, others came forward to dance.
Idalia grabbed Kellen’s hands and dragged him in among the dancers.
“Idalia—no! I don’t—” Kellen yelled.
“Relax—you learned this one back in the City!” she shouted back.
And it was true, though there the steps were slow and decorous, and certainly did not involve whirling your partner high into the air to be caught by another. But they were the same steps, and once Kellen realized that, he let the music take him, stamping and whirling through the complicated figures with an ease that made his partners shout and whistle appreciatively.
“WHAT … is … that thing?” Kellen asked his sister, when the music had changed to a slower piece to give the dancers time to catch their breath, and he and Idalia had gone in search of refreshment. Their progress was slow, for everyone wished to say personal good-byes to the two of them, but at last they had a moment to themselves.
“Verlin calls it a fiddle-faddle. They come from the High Reaches. I’m sure the Mountain Traders have offered them to the City, but I don’t suppose they’ve ever been licensed there.” Idalia snorted. “Why ask? Of course they haven’t. ‘Lute and harp were good enough for our grandfathers, certainly they are good enough for us,’ ” she said, in a fair imitation of Lycaelon at his most patronizing.
“And flute,” Kellen said helpfully. “And one or two other things. We got a bowed psaltery five years ago because we already had the plucked and hammered kind. But, oh, Idalia—it makes such wonderful music! And just think of all the other things out here in the world that never made it through the Golden Gates! Here, and beyond the Sea, and, oh, everywhere!”
It just made his heart ache to think of it. All the opportunities lost … all the things that could have been, and never were. It was enough to make you weep … .
WATCHING Kellen’s rapt excited face as he spoke of Verlin’s fiddle-faddling, Idalia blessed the old Centaur for staying behind to play here tonight. Since their discovery of the High Council’s plans, Kellen had been dangerously closed-in and angry, and anger was a perilous self-indulgence for a Wildmage.
It was not that those who walked the path of the Wild Magic were expected to detach themselves from human emotion, for that road led quickly to the closed-off asceticism of the High Magick, with all its pitfalls. Wildmages lived in the world, not cut off from it, and were expected to participate in all its griefs, terrors, and loves.
But anger was a destructive emotion, more so than any other. It destroyed the capacity for clear sight that a Wildmage needed above all things, and the first thing it destroyed was self-judgment. A Wildmage poisoned by anger might never even know it until it was too late, thinking only that he or she was filled with a righteous need to bring justice and balance back into the world.
That the Wildmage’s spells would turn against them and fail them, that the price exacted would be too heavy to bear for a spell cast in blind anger, would be cold consolation to Idalia if the caster was Kellen.
But everything was going to be all right. She was sure of it now. Sometimes Idalia forgot how young her little brother was, how sheltered a life he’d led until the last few moonturns. He was only seventeen; far too young to bear the burden of guilt for the flight of the inhabitants of the Western Hills into unknown peril.
Until tonight she’d been afraid that the guilt would sour him, the anger work in him like a canker, and his thoughts turn into darker paths. It was enough to unsettle a far older and steadier soul … but Kellen could not have responded so to Verlin’s music if the toxins of blind revenge were working in him.
She was furious with their father and the Council, and had fought a hard and bitter battle against her own rage to keep it from affecting her. Why couldn’t Lycaelon leave well enough alone? Kellen was gone from the City; as good as dead to him. What in the name of the Gods was driving the man on this suicidal course? The City could never possibly hold the territory Lycaelon so rashly claimed. The Wildlanders would fight back eventually; the western farmers weren’t Lycaelon’s tame cowed lowland villagers, nor yet his utterly pacified Armethaliehans.
Yes, if they resisted, they would lose. If they fought, they would die. And the High Council might get its own way for a time, “ruling” over lands they had emptied of the people who had lived and worked there.
But High Magick wasn’t free for the asking. Like the Wild Magic, it, too, had a price and must be paid for. If the High Council had to spend more and more of its power to pacify its new Western Holdings, where would they go to replace it?
And what would happen when, in the fullness of its ambition, the High Council of Armethalieh turned its attention from the Western Hills to the High Hills?
Idalia smiled her hard wolf-smile. The Mountain Traders had nowhere else to go: their lands backed directly on the Elven borders, and the Elves would not give up their lands for the asking. And even if the Mountain-folk did have somewhere they could flee to, they wouldn’t: the Mountain Traders had hated the City for generations with a cordial and stubborn hate. They hated the Council and its policies nearly as much as they loved their wild mountains—they would not abandon them for the Elven forests even if that was possible. And the Mountain-folk were far from helpless. By now, most of the Wildmages that had been driven out of every other place that Armethalieh had taken for its own were gathering in the High Reaches. The Mountain Traders would be able to call upon magical defenders of their own.
Armethalieh would regret its greediness. Perhaps not this year. Perhaps not in ten years. But if it pursued its present policies, the City was in for the fight of its life. Perhaps even a war … and that meant the M
ages would be using their High Magick on the war instead of at home on the City. Magick that had once gone to provide the most comfortable possible life for the citizens of the Golden City, the City of a Thousand Bells, would be squandered—to the Armethaliehans’ way of thinking—invisibly and unnoticeably, far from home and hearth. And what would Armethalieh’s citizens say when their comforts were abruptly withdrawn, to no purpose they could see?
There would be trouble. Trouble within, trouble without.
Change.
And it’s your own fault, Lycaelon Tavadon. You could have left us in peace, left the Western Hills and the High Reaches in peace, lived out your life as Arch-Mage of the High Council and had everything you ever wanted within those eight walls. But you let greed and pride and anger blind you, and now you’re going to destroy yourself.
Along with a great many innocent bystanders.
Idalia sighed. Her shoulders drooped tiredly. She could see it so clearly, not with magic, but as a thing of logic and the mind, the way an Elven xaqiue-master could see the outcome of the game once the first piece was shifted on the board.
But things might yet come out differently. All the pieces might not yet be on the board. She could only hope that was true, because the one thing she did know was that terrible as the picture her imaginings painted was, there was nothing for her to do to avert the future she saw. The only thing she could do was what she was doing: remove herself and Kellen beyond the City’s reach, into the land of the Elves.
That it was the one place in all the world she’d sworn she’d never return to was irrelevant. It was the only choice on a short list of possible destinations.
And this should teach her not to swear by “never” and “forever.”
THE Mayor’s speech, when he finally made it, was short—concentrating entirely on what a wonderful person Idalia was and how sorry they all were to see her go, without one word about the City—and followed by several others by other Guildmasters and village leaders in the same vein. Kellen’s suspicions had been completely lulled by the time he was seized and lifted up onto the platform.
The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Page 43